I’m not obsessed with it, but I’ve modded a few when it was easy and cheap to do so. I do really like seeing how people decorate, modify, use and store theirs. Kinda’ yuppie & middle-class to do so, maybe. Not really sure on the class dynamics of this.

My GBC from childhood. My brother and I got GBCs that year on our birthdays and then for Christmas we got Pokemon R/B/Y. Played those game so much. Must be hundreds of times by now. The lens was kinda’ scratched up so I got a new one and figured I’d do a colorful Pokemon theme for it loosely based on the colours those Pokemon edition GBCs had. Just finished this today. Use a booklight instead of a wormlight for better, diffuser lighting that also doesn’t drain the console’s battery as much.

Like 10-11 years ago I bought the GBA off a nintendocore musician that was discounting it since it was the last one with spare parts he had left. Has an AGS-101 screen inside it if I remember correctly. It was just a normal red GBA (plus the screen) and I swapped out the lens for a reproduction Pokemon Center lens and the white buttons/membranes. Honestly not a big fan of the AGS-101 screen due to the ghosting but non-backlit GBAs suck ass too, so IDK. Really hate how many drawbacks there are to modded screens, particularly the 3rd party ones, that the initial modders/youtubers/etc. don’t mention at all. Fake gamers, I tell you. If I can find a small, cheap Latias pendant/charm I might attach one to the little lanyard spot. GBA’s one of the most comfortable handhelds/controllers in my opinion so that’s why I stuck with it over an SP. I also much, much prefer to using my hoard of rechargeable AA/AAAs to built-in ones.


I had to repair my stick(s) for stick drift. I think it was the right one would do left inputs very softly, most noticeably in menus and it was getting worse. I fucking hate how Nintendo has handled this issue. Figured I might as well just try those hall effect sticks/sensors instead of haemorrhaging more money to Nintendo. Figured I might as well swap out the shells if I’m going to completely disassemble the joysticks to do that. I kinda’ like the TOTK OLED model’s colour scheme but it’s not great. I think I got a decent colour scheme here that matches everything: stand, screen theme, and carrying bag. Kinda’ wish I went BOTW-themed since I prefer that game to TOTK. Swapping out those sensors was a pain in the ass. Wasn’t impossible or skill-intensive but so many small parts you need to fold over each other and stuff inside the housing and the tiny springs on the L/R buttons are super easy to lose. I also tore one of the ribbon cables that connects to the joycon rails in the main console and had to buy another one and wait like 10 days (after the first one I ordered cancelled) and it has this little pigtail knot bit you need to do that’s tricky as fuck to plug in the cable with (with tweezers while maintaining the knot). Glad I managed to do it at least.


My Saturn’s top buttons that control the power, reset, lid fuckin’ dissolved away for some reason. I only needed the top housing and buttons/springs etc. to swap out but couldn’t find anywhere. Oh, also it was missing all but like 2 screws from the bottom of the case/shell for some reason. Ended up buying a broken Japanese saturn and Frankensteining the models together so I have this weird ‘90s VCR-looking Saturn now. At least it’s all screwed together with perfectly working buttons though because of slight differences in the models I had to do some tricky shenanigans and slam the case shut and screw it together before some springs popped out. It has been like 2-3 years and it hasn’t fallen apart yet so whatever. Kinda’ tempted to get one of those white and pink Japanese Saturns because the player 1 controller port on this one’s finnicky and I have no idea how I’d fix it, maybe I could desolder the port off the Japanese one and try it on this one but I suspect that got changed in the revisions too.